Cheating, or cheap trick?

We know it’s election season when we get bombarded with complaints about alleged breaches of arcane campaign laws. It seems like only yesterday when labor-aligned foes of San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed accused him of illegally funneling cash to promote council ally Rose Herrera‘s re-election, an assertion a judge rejected on free-speech grounds.

Fast-forward to the 2014 primary season and we already have a fresh crop of complaints, this time targeting another Reed ally running to replace him: Dist. 3 Councilman Sam Liccardo. Complaints lodged with San Jose’s Elections Commission and the state’s Fair Political Practices Commission this week accuse Liccardo of lining up campaign donors before the law allows, violating campaign accounting rules and failing to disclose “in-kind” contributions from supporters who hosted campaign events.

Liccardo’s foes in organized labor have been poking at this for weeks now, with the anonymous Daily Fetch blog dubbing him “Cheaties Liccardo.”

Liccardo’s camp scoffs at what they call a political stunt without substance.

“This kind of frivolous complaint has sadly become the norm in San José campaigns,” campaign manager Ragan Henninger said. “It is part of the campaign arsenal of some of the labor unions that are still angry with Sam Liccardo, Mayor Reed and other council members who stood up to reform unsustainable pension costs. Similar baseless complaints have also been filed in the past against Mayor Reed, the Chamber of Commerce and other candidates, leaders and groups that supported pension reform. Put simply, it’s a retaliatory move designed to intimidate those who stood up against powerful special interests – and today it’s directed at the person those special interests view as the biggest threat to their handpicked candidate.”

By that she presumably means Santa Clara County Supervisor Dave Cortese.